A lot has been said and written about whales. Some have claimed that whales have too much influence on steemit. That because of the whales some content that is uninteresting have earned a lot of money, while other content where the writer have put a lot of hours and efforts, barely made a few bucks. Also they claim that whales will always grow in influence as all their steem is in steem power. So let’s have a closer look at this, and see why that is actually not true.
Whales are losing influence
Some say that because whales have put all their steems in steem power, they will always grow and become more influential. This is actually not true. When people convert their steem into steem power it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are accumulating power. To understand it we have to look at the growth of steem power relatively to the growth of the supply of steem. In the “white paper” it states that the total supply growth of steem is around 100% per year, and only 90% goes to people holding steem power. This means that if the whales are not creating attractive content and so not earning extra value, they will on average lose approximately 10% of influence each year. So in the long run they are becoming smaller whales or dolphins.
Here is a little sample to show that “it’s possible” for whales to have their shares decreased.
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Is it possible for whales to increase their power?
Yes they can, but on the long run, it’s almost impossible. We are now still in the early stages, where the user base is still relatively small, and subjects are still concentrated. This result in a more concentrated attention to the early developers and whales. Especially on post on updates and spam. In the long run though subject will be more diverse and the user base will be larger. In order the whales to increase their influence, they need to compete in the same environment on the same criteria in creating attractive content as other people. Which I believe is almost impossible. Because we, the people, eventually consisting of millions of newcomers will have some very creative individuals who can create wonderful blogs and videos that current whales cannot make.
Why the whales earned to be in this position in the beginning
In a good working economy you have entrepreneurs trying to create value through taking risk by investing their capital, time and efforts. It is their reward for doing this successfully. As long as what they create is valuable to us. It’s like Satoshi Nakamoto inventing the blockchain, which is arguable one of the most important inventions in the last few decades, and thereby reserving a significant share of bitcoins for himself.
Who will be the next whales?
Now we understand that the 10% of new supply of steems is meant for distribution for content creators, we understand that creating attractive content is the key for this. So maybe it’s Heiditravel, Cairns, Tara, or @chhaylin! The answer to this is who we will like the most. Of course I can be biased and say I like chhaylin’s post the most, because he is my little brother. But that’s not how it works. It’s about what everyone likes. And it’s the people or companies that can please us the most who eventually will become whales.
Honest content.
But anyhow, the content should be honest and not plagiarism. We don’t want to reward the wrong people who steal other people’s work. So let’s keep it fair and straight. So maybe the @cheetah! bot doesn't have to come after you.